Rev. David Holwick A
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey (well-received)
January 6, 2013
Revelation 3:1-2
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I. What is your reputation worth?
A. Sometimes you find out after it is too late.
1) A casualty of a scandal.
The accounting firm of Arthur Andersen was founded in 1913.
Mr. Andersen was a zealous supporter of high standards in
the accounting industry.
A stickler for honesty, he argued that accountants'
responsibility was to investors, not company management.
During the early years, it is reputed that Andersen was
approached by an executive from a local rail utility to
sign off on accounts containing flawed accounting.
If he didn't do it, he would face the loss of a major
client.
Andersen replied that there was "not enough money in the
city of Chicago" to make him do it.
The company's motto was "Think straight, talk straight."
With that impeccable reputation, Andersen became the largest
business consulting corporation in the world.
Then something happened.
The company was convicted for obstruction of justice in the
shredding of documents relating to the Enron scandal.
Though the conviction was overturned on technical grounds,
this once-mighty firm with 85,000 employees worldwide
was quickly whittled down to only 200 employees.
Proverbs 22:1 says,
"A good name is more desirable than great riches;
to be esteemed is better than silver or gold."
#63501
2) Modern business executives have learned from this.
Many of them hire firms like Reputation.com to clean up
their online reputation.
Negative articles are deleted.
Phony reviewers are paid to sing the praises of the client
at online review sites.
Photos of them with a lampshade on their head at the company
Christmas party get the name removed.
And it only costs between $5,000 and $10,000 a month!
You can never be too careful....
#63898
B. Your reputation matters.
1) People are watching you.
Will Houghton was a preacher who became the president of
Moody Bible Institute during the 1940s.
Before he went to Moody, he was called to pastor a large
church in Atlanta.
Before long, the 4,000-seat auditorium was filled, people
were being saved and the church was prospering.
During his first months in the city, an agnostic hospital
official became very despondent and considered suicide.
He decided that if he could find a minister who lived his
faith with integrity he would listen to him.
So he hired a private detective to "shadow" the pastor to
see if he really lived what he preached.
At the end of the investigation, the detective reported,
"He lives it - there's no flaw there!"
As a result, the official was converted and spent his life
seeking to win others to Christ.
He also sent his daughter to Moody Bible Institute.
#33862
2) If someone hired an investigator to track you, what would
they find?
II. Good reputations don't come easily.
A. It is the sum of your visible actions over the years.
1) Jesus - by their fruit you will know them. Matt 7:16
a) Jesus is speaking specifically about false teachers,
but it also applies to good people.
b) Your actions speak louder than your words.
c) Consciously or unconsciously, people size you up every
day and watch how you respond to situations.
2) Assess your own fruit right now.
a) What would the people at your job say about your work
habits?
b) What would your neighbors say about your level of
generosity and helpfulness?
c) What would your family say about the consistency of
your behavior in church, vs. in your home?
B. One bad action can undo everything.
1) Many people have lived essentially upright lives, only
to blow it all from falling to a single temptation.
a) People will assume that one fall actually is just
the tip of an iceberg, even if it isn't.
b) You can gain a good reputation again, but that can
take years.
2) If there is an area of your life that could trip you up,
what are you doing to keep it under control?
a) You need to be strong in the big areas, like fidelity
to your spouse, honesty with money, and self-control
with things that can be addictive.
b) You also have to be strong in the smaller areas, where
you may not be as strong as you think you are.
III. The Bible tells us to do our best to maintain a good reputation.
A. Unfortunately, Christians have a cloud over them.
1) A young pastor's observations.
Dieter Zander is the pastor of what is considered the first
"Generation X" church in America.
This is the generation that came of age in the late 1980s,
one that not been big at attending church.
Dieter cited a Barna study that asked people to use single
words to describe Jesus.
They responded, "wise, accepting, compassionate, gracious,
humble."
Then the researchers asked them to use single words to
describe Christians.
They said, "critical, exclusive, self-righteous, narrow and
repressive."
Pastor Dieter says, "There is a difference between knowing
the good news and being the good news."
"We are the evidence!
How we live our lives is the evidence.
Everything counts -- all the time."
Dieter says that despite what you may gather from
mega-churches, young people don't want to be entertained.
They want to be transformed.
They are looking for a God who can take them beyond the
ordinary experiences of life.
They want something that they don't see in most religious
people, even in churches like ours.
#35165
2) Why do Christians have such a bad rap?
a) Undoubtedly, the lousy character of many believers
plays a part.
1> All of us know religious people who are mean and
self-righteous.
2> A Southern Baptist research firm did a survey and
found that 77% of those with no religion think
the church is "full of hypocrites."
3> Another 44% said "Christians get on my nerves."
#35001
b) I think another factor is at play here.
1> Many people object to Christians because they really
object to anyone who tries to apply a moral
standard to their life.
2> It's not so much that they are against judgmentalism,
as against any kind of judgment.
A> They want to banish the concept of sin.
B> Christians in good conscience can't do that,
so we get rejected.
B. Make sure your life measures up to your principles.
1) Integrity in our lives can de-fang much criticism of our
faith.
1 Peter 2:12
"Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they
accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds
and glorify God on the day he visits us."
2) Let the world see you up close.
That Baptist survey of unchurched people found that 89% of
them have at least one close Christian friend.
71% even say they believe Jesus can make "a positive
difference in a person's life."
78% would "be willing to listen" to someone who wanted to
share what they believe about Christianity.
#35001
Live in such a way that they will be willing to listen to
what you have to say about Jesus.
C. This is especially true if you are a leader.
1 Timothy 3:7
"[An elder] must have a good reputation with outsiders, so that
he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil's trap."
IV. Reputation isn't always accurate.
A. Some with good reputations don't deserve them. Rev 3:1-2
1) The church in Sardis had a reputation for being spiritually
alive, but it was all a sham.
2) Verse 3 suggests that what was missing was basic obedience.
a) They weren't living according to the gospel.
b) This is true of many Christians.
B. Some with bad reputations don't deserve them, either.
1) Many of the people Jesus dealt with came from sordid
backgrounds - prostitutes and sinners.
2) The opponents of Jesus had these people labeled and they
criticized Jesus for hanging around with them.
3) But Jesus knew that these sinners had repented, and were
showing it by the way they honored him.
4) Your reputation with other people is always limited to
their fallible human perception.
a) On the positive side, we can take comfort in knowing
that their low opinion of us may not be justified.
b) On the negative side, we should be aware that while
humans can err, God does not.
V. Character is better than reputation.
A. Thomas Paine made the right distinction.
1) A quote attributed to the famous opponent of religion says,
"Reputation is what men and women think of us;
character is what God and angels know of us." #2064
2) Only God really knows what we are truly like on the inside.
a) He knows that we all fall short, we are just made of mud.
b) God's judgment of us will be based on hard facts.
c) You won't be able to massage this with a reputation
management company.
B. You need Jesus on your side.
1) When you live as if God is watching, you come to realize
that no one really deserves a good reputation.
2) But as you stumble along, you can appreciate God's grace
to us.
3) Everyone needs a savior, and Jesus wants to be that to you.
4) He will be more valuable to you than any reputation.
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
# 2064 “Quotes On Reputation,” Abe Kudra Illustration Collection. Paine's
quote has been variously attributed. "Reputation is what men
and women think of us, character is what God and the angels know
of us" is attributed to Thomas Paine in “A Dictionary of Terms,
Phrases, and Quotations” (1895) edited by Henry Percy Smith, and
Helen Kendrick Johnson. <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Horace_Mann>
notes that it is attributed to Horace Mann, in “The Wordsworth
Dictionary of Quotations” (1998) edited by Connie Robertson, but
the earliest published variant of such a declaration seem to be in
an anecdote about an anonymous Boston woman in 1889: "I have the
reputation of being of good moral character. But you know
reputation is what people think of us, while character is what God
and the angels know of us, and that I don’t want to tell."
(Anonymous Boston woman, as quoted in Current Opinion [1889]).
Price Collier, in Sermons (1892) put it this way: "There is a very
great difference — is there not? — between the temporal and the
eternal judgments, a very great difference between a man’s
reputation and a man’s character, for reputation is what men think
and say of us, while character is what God and the angels know of us."
#33862 “A Private Detective Found Out,” taken from Kerux Sermon #24719 by
Rev. Timothy Olson, Kurume Bible Fellowship in Toyko, Japan. It is
adapted from <http://www2.salinabible.org/index.php ?option=~
com_content&view=article&id=904:will-houghton-from-performer-to-~
preacher&catid=401&Itemid=101>.
#35001 “What The Unchurched Think,” Preaching Now, www.preaching.com,
February 5, 2008. Adapted from Baptist Press, January 9, 2008, via
Church Leaders Intelligence Report.
#35165 “Looking For A Transcendent God,” contributed by Paul Fritz,
www.sermoncentral.com newsletter, March 10, 2008.
#63501 “A Good Name Destroyed,” Michael Q. Pink, worklife.org daily
devotional, January 3, 2012.
#63898 “Managing Your Online Reputation,” David Holwick, adapted from
“Erasing the Digital Past,” Nick Bilton, New York Times,
April 1, 2011, <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/fashion/03reputation.html>.
These and 35,000 others are part of the Kerux database that can be
downloaded, absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html
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